The Super Bowl has become an American holiday for many reasons, from the perfect timing in the sports calendar to the halftime show to the sweet spot of spectacle, violence and capitalism it resides in. But I’d argue the best thing about the Super Bowl, and the reason it’s such a massive event every year, is that even people who don’t have the foggiest idea of what in the world is going on can enjoy the game. The Super Bowl can be fun for the most diehard of fans, and it can also be fun for those who only watch one game a year. The Super Bowl is whatever you want it to be. It’s the ultimate Casual Event.
Much like any of the great Casual Events (award shows, presidential debate town halls, live reality show tapings) what always stands out most are the personalities: The people who will take the opportunity of American culture’s grandest stage to imprint themselves on our collective memories for … well, until the next Super Bowl, anyway. You know the Rams are playing. You know the Bengals are playing. But here are the people you need to know, and why.
Joe Burrow: Is He the Next Tom Brady? Probably not. But Burrow is the instant star of these playoffs, the guy who went from a backup at Ohio State five years ago to leading the moribund Cincinnati Bengals to their first playoff victory (and first Super Bowl) in more than 30 years. There is no one in this game more likely to catapult themselves deep into the public consciousness than Burrow, and not just because of his sartorial choices.
In the wake of Tom Brady’s retirement, you can expect much NFL discussion in the coming years to revolve around “who is the next Brady?” in the same way all anybody talked about for 20 years in the NBA after Michael Jordan retired was “who is the next Michael?” (And in the same way we will when LeBron James retires.) Last year’s Super Bowl, which pitted the NFL’s reigning young phenom quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, against Brady himself, already trafficked heavily in this theme. Burrow, who with a win would become the first quarterback ever to win a Heisman Trophy, a college football championship and a Super Bowl, will be thrown into the same sports talk show cauldron if he pulls this off.
Matt Stafford: Will He Blow It? Stafford is kind of the opposite of Joe Burrow. He spent the first 12 years of his NFL career playing for the Detroit Lions, which is to say, he played in misery and obscurity. He made the playoffs three times, losing all three games, but after the Rams traded for him this offseason, he immediately took them to a division title and, after three playoff wins, the Super Bowl. He’s tall, sturdy and competent– exactly what the otherwise-stacked Rams were looking for. He also has an extremely bad habit of throwing inexplicable interceptions late in games—if it’s close in the fourth quarter, look out for that.
Al Michaels: Just How Much Will He Talk About Gambling? For years, the commentator has been famous for sneaking in subtle references to gambling lines during games. He had to be subtle about it because, for most of his broadcasting career, the NFL wanted nothing to do with gambling. Now? Well, now it’s a major revenue stream for the league. Gambling is going to come up constantly. Put it this way: there will be a lot more references to gambling on the broadcast than there will be to Brian Flores (see below).
Jalen Ramsey: Better in the Super Bowl, or Jackass Forever? Ramsey is currently the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history, though we’re only just now hearing about him because he finally got the hell out of Jacksonville, where he played the first four years of his career. He once got in a fight with wide receiver Golden Tate because he used to date Tate’s sister, which is a rare good reason for football players to fight. He’s famously outspoken, once telling this magazine that Bills quarterback Josh Allen was “trash” (he isn’t), former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was “decent at best” (fair) and Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan is “overrated” (shrug emoji). You can actually get yourself a Ramsey double dip this weekend: Before you watch him in the Super Bowl on Sunday, you can see him in Jackass Forever: He smashes the gang’s “Danger” Ehren into concrete.
Evan McPherson: Folk Hero? Every wild run like the one the Bengals are on needs a folk hero. Cincinnati’s is, perhaps inevitably, a kicker. McPherson is a rookie kicker—the only kicker selected in last year’s draft—who has been perfect in the postseason, hitting a stunning 12 field goals in three games. He also has an unusual amount of swag for a kicker, to the point that he told his holder “Let’s be legendary” right before the snap on his game winner to send the Bengals to the Super Bowl. This is pretty cocky for a kicker, but if he gets another game-winner on Sunday, he will have completed one of the most amazing rookie seasons (even for a kicker) in NFL history.
Joe Mixon: Reminder of NFL’s Ugly Recent History. Remember when domestic violence was the NFL’s big public relations debacle? That’s all in the past now, and the proof is the Bengals running back. Mixon was a spotlight offender when the Bengals drafted him in 2017, thanks to an incident in college at Oklahoma in 2014 when he punched a woman so hard that he fractured her facial bones. The charges were lessened to a misdemeanor, probably because he was a standout recruit for the Sooners. (It was an extremely ugly incident.) Mixon was under such scrutiny that Patriots owner Robert Kraft, not exactly a moral beacon himself, said, “I also believe that playing in the NFL is a privilege, not a right. I believe that privilege is lost for men who have a history of abusing women.”
When the Bengals drafted Mixon, a local TV station actually called for a boycott of the team. But because this is the NFL, which always just steamrolls through bad publicity with the pure power and popularity of its games, hardly anyone remembers this about Mixon anymore, particularly now that he is a 1,200 yard rusher for a Super Bowl team. That television station that called for a boycott five years ago? They’re now doing soft focus features on funny dances Mixon does when he scores a touchdown. Winning at football erases everything. Sorry.
Brian Flores: Will He Be Mentioned At All? Maybe once. The racial discrimination lawsuit filed against the NFL by the former Miami coach has roiled the league and commissioner Roger Goodell all week, but the Super Bowl is way too high stakes of an investment to dwell on anything negative for too long. Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth will likely bring Flores up once, the two white men talking awkwardly about race and power in the NFL, and then they will move on and never bring it up again. Suffice it to say, the NFL is not going to spend a lot of time during its signature event discussing a class-action lawsuit against it.
Aaron Donald: Super Bowl MVP? Quarterbacks always come first in the NFL, but it’s entirely possible that the most common sight in this year’s game will be Donald bursting through the Bengals offensive line to sack Joe Burrow. Donald is one of the greatest defensive players you will ever see in your life, so monstrously huge and fast that it requires multiple massive humans to block him. (The specter of being chopped in half by him in the NFC Division Round game may have been what finally pushed Tom Brady into retirement.) He is the platonic ideal of what a football player should look like and how they should play. He’s also the emotional leader of the Rams’ defense: His rally-the-troops speech in the NFC title game may have pushed the Rams into the Super Bowl.
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And Finally, the Game. It has actually been four years, when Philadelphia beat New England in 2018, since we had a particularly close Super Bowl. You shouldn’t expect one this time either. The Bengals are a great story, and Burrow is clearly going to win a Super Bowl someday. But he has a porous offensive line, which is going to be a major problem against this terrifying Rams pass rush. The Rams have rounded into their best selves the last few weeks and are peaking at the right time. Sorry, but: This one’s probably not going to be close either.
Will Leitch is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, co-host of “The Long Game With LZ and Leitch” podcast, a writer for MLB and Medium and the founder of Deadspin. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter and buy his novel “How Lucky,” out from Harper Books now.